


A Wig for Every Head

by theacesofspades



Series: sarchengsey roadtrip snapshots [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Fluff, Multi, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 05:22:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8698684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theacesofspades/pseuds/theacesofspades
Summary: A bright billboard caught her eye. It was garishly colored and designed by someone who had no right to be picking colors or fonts and it advertised for Earl’s Wig Emporium.





	

Henry, Blue, and Gansey had been on the road for almost five hours.

Henry was taking his turn behind the wheel, and Gansey was stretched out in the passenger seat, a big map of the US unfolded in her lap. She had wanted to use a GPS for their trip and her parents had even bought her a nice one with lots of buttons, neat add-ons, and voice-recognition, specifically for their trip, but Henry and Blue had insisted it wouldn’t be an Authentic American Trip if they didn’t use a paper map and get lost at least once.

While Henry and Gansey argued over what street to take (“We’ll get there faster if we stay on the highway.” “But we will get to experience the colorful local life if we take backstreets!”), Blue lay in the backseat, leaning her head on the window and looking for anything that might be worth pulling over for.

She wasn’t having much luck until a bright billboard caught her eye. It was garishly colored and designed by someone who had no right to be picking colors or fonts and it advertised for _Earl’s Wig Emporium (a wig for every head!)_

It was perfect.

“I found something!”

Gansey saw the sign, saw Blue’s face, saw Henry’s eyes light up, and groaned internally, but she was nothing if not a sucker for her girlfriend, so she helped Henry find the turnoff and it was only ten minutes later that they were entering the store.

Earl’s Wig Emporium was sadly normal compared to its billboard but it was also full of row after row of several different brands, colors, styles, and quality of wigs and Blue looked very much as though she was in heaven. She immediately tore off to look through the garishly-colored wigs that Gansey thought looked more like plastic than hair, with Henry not far behind.

“Do you kids need any help?” The woman behind the checkout counter didn’t look much older than Gansey. She wondered if she was related to Earl, or if the name of the store was one of those that never seemed to have a real person connected to it.

“No, thank you, ma’am. I’m sure we’ll be fine.” Gansey flashed her “D.C. Smile” (she still wasn’t sure how she felt about Henry’s nickname for a smile she thought was perfectly normal and unneeding of any specific titles) at the lady and went off in the same general direction she had seen Henry and Blue take into the labyrinth of wigs.

She figured they would probably be entranced with the cheaper and funnier looking wigs but she let herself get sidetracked down an aisle of more expensive wigs.

Gansey wandered alone through the rows, running her fingers through the different types of hair. She could hear Blue and Henry, wherever they were, giggling from here. She grinned to herself as she made out Blue’s snort and Henry’s snicker. She loved their laughs.

She stopped when she came to a row of wigs that were designed to look realistic. There were several colors and styles and Gansey found herself wondering.

 _Could I pull off hair like this?_ She fingered the ends of a wig that came close to matching her hair color, contemplating the length. It ended in a soft curl that landed around the chin of the mannequin head. _Maybe. . . ._

She jerked her hand away like she’d been burned when someone turned into the aisle she was in, but it was just Blue with a shopping basket full of wigs that looked like they had been rescued from the dumpster behind a Party City.

Blue ran down the aisle toward her but slowed when she got near Gansey. Gansey must have had an odd look on her face - it was getting harder and harder for her to school her features in time when she was around her friends - because the crease that showed up between Blue’s eyebrows whenever she was thinking or upset by something was beginning to make an appearance.

“Gansey? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, why?” Gansey smiled widely, hoping Blue didn’t put two and two together. She loved and trusted all of her friends, but she hadn’t had much time to consider how she would want to transition and for the time being she thought she might still kind of want to keep it private, a personal intimate thing that she would tell others about later. _After_ she had had time to figure it out for herself.

But she would have to remember to give her girlfriend more credit. Blue’s eyes darted to the wig Gansey had just been looking at and frowned in thought.

“Gansey,” Blue placed her basket down gently on the ground and softly took one of Gansey’s hands. “are you going to want to grow your hair out?” Blue seemed tentative and hesitant. 

Gansey supposed she couldn’t blame her. She’d known Ronan for years and she was still sometimes afraid of what might be the wrong thing to say to him with regards to his gender and his transition. Though that mostly came from Ronan himself being so prickly - much like with his sexuality, Ronan saw his gender as a non-issue as long as it was something everyone just accepted and never spoke of outright.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, looking back at the wig she’d just been studying.

After her realization that she was a girl, Gansey had spent so much time worrying about Blue that she hadn’t spent much time at all considering herself and how she might want to present. She tried to think about it now. “I don’t think I would want especially long hair. But definitely . . . longer than it is now?”

Even before she had realized she was a girl, Gansey had never given too much thought to the way she looked, beyond looking presentable and appropriately Richard Gansey III™. Which had mostly entailed differently colored variations of the same outfit everyday, come to think of it. But who could blame her, when so much of her past life had been devoted to Glendower? Long-dead kings didn’t typically care who found them or what those people looked like, and Gansey had had far more important things to worry about than whether or not she liked the way she dressed.

Gansey realized she was tugging at the ends of her hair self-consciously and quickly pulled her hand down back by her side.

“I think you’d look pretty with long hair.” In Gansey’s silence, Blue had begun to peruse the wigs on the wall, occasionally grabbing one and holding it by Gansey’s face before shaking her head and putting it back.

“Blues, you think Gansey is pretty no matter what she looks like.” Henry appeared suddenly behind Gansey. Hidden from the rest of the store’s few customers by several rows of wigs, he was brave enough to wrap his arms around Gansey’s waist and even graced her with a surreptitious kiss on her neck.

Blue snorted and rolled her eyes, but didn’t deny his accusations, instead kissing him and Gansey on the cheeks.

Gansey grinned and leaned back in Henry’s arms. Every day she was with Henry and Blue, Gansey felt as though she could not be luckier or more in love, and each new day proved her wrong.

She loved the crease Blue got in between her eyebrows as she studied each wig. She loved how her tongue poked out as she considered how they would look on her, or Gansey, or Henry. She loved Henry pulling them both farther back into the store, towards the cheaper and more outrageously colored wigs. She loved the rainbow wig that Henry stuffed on Blue over the pigtails dotting her head, the hot pink bob he arranged delicately around Gansey’s face, the purple one that might have once been layered but now just looked like it was losing hair that he paraded around in.

In the end they didn’t buy anything, but after some time of deep discussion spent on the floor in the back of Earl’s Wig Emporium surrounded by several different types of wigs, they did help Gansey decide to start growing her hair out.

Blue kept to her opinion that Gansey would look beautiful with long hair like Orla’s or Helen’s, but Henry was adamant that a shorter ‘do would be even better, something more Blue’s length.

Gansey was silent for most of the discussion, content to let Blue and Henry fuss over her while she busied herself texting Adam selfies with the ugliest wigs she could find.

 _The oompa loompa green one does wonders for your face. Definitely that one._ Adam texted back. Gansey grinned.

Gansey had called up Adam to come out to him and Ronan the morning after Henry and Blue had found her crying in the motel bathroom. Adam had accepted her as easily as she had expected and Ronan had indeed declared that he had known all along and it was only a matter of time before she realized it for herself.

She’d been crying through her laughter, but neither of them commented on it and Henry and Blue had been there hugging her and for once she really did feel like everything was going to be fine.

Gansey’s phone dinged with another text from Adam. _That pink one Henry picked out for you really . . . accentuates your face? I’m sorry, I don’t know how to say it. It makes you look really pretty._

Gansey gaped at the phone for a while before sending back several hearts and a kissyface emoji. She knew Adam wasn’t huge into emojis but she figured he’d fine just this once. She really did love her friends. Sometimes so desperately it hurt.

There had been a time Gansey when had thought she could never be truly known. She had never been so devastatingly happy to be proven wrong, again and again and again.

Eventually, after hours of selfies, wigs, and discussing Gansey’s hair, they left and returned to their car. Blue was dismayed to see that the Sun was already setting (“We were supposed to be in Colorado by the end of today! I didn’t mean to take so much of our time.”) but Gansey and Henry assured her that half the fun of their trip was doing stupid, out-of-the-way stuff like this.

Gansey took Blue’s right hand and Henry took her left and they each swung her hands back and forth between them on the way back to the Camaro, Blue watching their hands swinging.

“I can’t wait to see what your hair will look like, Gansey,” she admitted.

“Hopefully she’ll take better care of her hair than you do of yours.” Henry bumped his shoulder into Blue’s, almost sending her toppling into Gansey.

Blue wrinkled her nose up at Henry, grinning. “I’ve got more important things to focus on than my hair!” she argued, bumping Henry right back.

Gansey smiled, watching them, then laughed suddenly. “Blue, you have glitter all over you.”

Blue looked down at herself and her mouth fell open in a small ‘o’ as she realized that she was indeed covered head to toe in a light sprinkle of glitter. Gansey laughed, “I didn’t even see any sparkly wigs, how did you manage that?”

“I don’t know! I didn’t notice until just now!”

Henry looked delightfully amused, and swung his arm around Blue’s shoulder. “Perhaps it is just a Blue thing? Gansey, I think our small girlfriend may be holding out on some hidden magic powers!”

Gansey loved how quickly Blue’s laughs devolved into snorts, how Henry started out laughing with his mouth hidden behind his hand but was quickly bent over gasping once Blue got started. She loved how both of them laughing could get her laughing so hard she started crying.

She loved Blue and she loved Henry. And she loved how much they loved her.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about wig shops. I don't know why I have even put this in a wig shop, it's just what came to mind. I am so sorry.
> 
> Thank you so much for your sweet comments on my last two fics! Y'all have no idea how much those meant to me and how much they encouraged me to keep on writing. Y'all are the sweetest!!


End file.
